OPEN 16 International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations

DURATION: 2013-08-29 ~ 2013-09-29
OPENING: 2013-08-29 18:00-PM
VENUE: Venezia Lido, Isola di San Servolo

Conceived and curated by Paolo De Grandis, co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa, the exhibition is organised by PDG Arte Communications and is held under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of the Cultural Heritage, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Veneto Region and the Province of Venice. During the exhibition the forth edition of the Premio Speciale Arte Laguna will be assigned to a young artist selected by the Arte Laguna Prize jury. This award will offer the winner the possibility to be included among the finalists of the Arte Laguna Prize 2014 and to show his or her work on the circuit organised by the same association. “Moving things that are still, stopping things that move” said G.C. Argan about Signorelli, an interplay of levers and springs to overcome the inertia of the figure. Perhaps today “coding the signifier and decoding the signified” would be the challenge for OPEN. The curators have chosen not a theme but a language, providing the artist with a code, or rather with the signifier, a flag, a standard, a piece of fabric measuring 3x1m. A visual grammatical element based on rules of syntax linked to the urban context, to spatial configuration, the open-air spaces and the air of Venice Lido. The spatial relationship swings between background and foreground, closed form and open form, then experience and meaningfulness, to reveal the function of visual language, whether it be expressive, exhortative, aesthetic or informative. The flags at OPEN develop according to the rules of classical composition of the image, based on equilibrium, weight, perspective, rhythm, movement, direction and, finally, symmetry. Though the curator offers the code, it is the artist himself who adopts it, interprets it, manipulates it or even overcomes it. Interpretation for Puni the fabrics, remnants and cloths in daily use, reveal their aesthetic and sensitive immediacy, moving towards a reciprocal relationship that rejects dominion and possession. Decomposition demands the choice to transfer the vision through part of its story and so the triptych painted by Will Kerr is transposed into two narrative banners that evade from the original tale of the painting and are transformed into impressionable matter, rich in the virtuosities of a calligraphist in which the archaeologist’s eye of the artist stimulates questions constantly changing and impossible to grasp. The evolution is conceptual in Barbara Taboni, visual in Casagrande & Recalcati, Umberto Zampini, Alvise Bittente and Claudia Danieli. Pop appropriation for Gaetano K. Bodanza, the colour germinates and spreads in shaped canvases that give life to alien creatures,“other” insects where a strong contact occurs with the primeval forces of Nature, with irreverent thought. Pop taste grafted onto a world open to the eternal making and unmaking of existence in the works of Stefano Fioresi and Ronni Ahmmed: in the latter, super-heroes contaminate an expressive short circuit with a highly dramatic flavour. An unprecedented composition of words for Marotta & Russo, the word as shape and content. Manipulation for Yi Zhou, a cross-sectional view of sketches, drawings and videos, intermittent visual sequences. With Marco Nereo Rotelli the concept is taken even further, as flags are transformed into steel discs, recreating a universe in which flags are depicted in sequential contamination. The geographical coordinates are extended to include the emerging scene of Taiwan, exploring the multiple expressive researches of Chen Chung-Hao, Chou Yu-Cheng, Mei Dean-E, Yao Jui-Chung. The movement of the flags contrasts with the immobility of the site-specific installations on the Island of San Servolo, where matter absorbs, transmits and transforms. The artworks of Bettina Werner are nourished with salt crystals. The traces of memory on the basic forms of the intellect, representing the beauty of existence of nature itself. The "pagne" used to make Virginia Ryan’s sarongs tangibly become the signified and the signifier, drawing inspiration from her personal experience in Africa, to depict current events from a strictly feminine viewpoint. Linked to the manual and artistic skill of knitting, on a path between wool and cotton, Maria Elisa D’Andrea alternates the plain and purl of the constant factors of human life in settings of apparent incessant change. Matter is metamorphosed in the sections of tree trunk by Federico Seppi in which the medullary rays, while revealing the narrative intent, give way to pure and simple contemplation. Matter enveloped in mirrored wedges that absorb and reflect the light in the supine figure by Raquel Monje. Matter that becomes pigment in Consolata Radicati di Primeglio and then Olga Lah’s coloured ribbons, creating a path in search of the most intimate meaning where the visitor can unwind the ball of string in this ideal labyrinth. The work of the Peruvian artist Ana Maria Reque presents a camouflaged artifact, an oblique gaze between art and architecture. A visual see-saw of sudden black-outs and revelations in the manikins with faces of extruded quartz by the Japanese artist Atsushi Tawa and in the collection by Tim Ellis, itineraries with stratifications of hybrid materials, stimulating the senses, up to the rediscovery of the industrial "objets trouvés" by Kao Tsan-Hsing stripped of any pretence of interpretation and dedicated to interior searching. They use different words, but they speak the same language: the language of images. They are Cinema and Art. One is expression in perpetual movement, the other is expression captured and fixed in a single gesture of movement. There is no conflict between two artistic forms that live on image and feed on the desire to translate emotions. They permeate one another as a direct source of inspiration for the project that combines painting, graphic art and design, by Oleg Shobin, Andrei Belov and Irenkova, Bazinato and Anna Aparina The Giant Movie Affiches TOP 30 presented by ARTPLAZ Gallery, MINSK. OPEN, an “agitated space” that stimulates reflection and itself becomes a tool for acquiring knowledge. The visitor is invited to venture along the possible paths to discover the ultimate salvation of art: a journey through the unceasing variety of horizons, emotions and encounters. PARTICIPATING ARTISTS Australia / Italia - Virginia Ryan Austria - Peter Nussbuam Bangladesh - Ronni Ahmmed Belarus - The Giant Movie Affiches TOP 30: Oleg Shobin, Andrei Belov e Irenkova, Bazinato e Anna Aparina China - Yi Zhou Italy - Luciano Angeleri, Alvise Bittente, Roberto Bricalli, Gaetano K. Bodanza, Casagrande & Recalcati, Maria Elisa D’Andrea, Claudia Danieli, Stefano Fioresi, Francesco Lussana, Marotta & Russo, Aldo Mondino, Puni, Consolata Radicati di Primeglio, Marco Nereo Rotelli, Luca Scacchetti, Federico Seppi, Barbara Taboni, Umberto ZampiniJapan - Kounosuke Kawakami Korea / USA Nam June Paik Peru - Ana Maria Reque Spain - Raquel Monje Switzerland - Tamara Bialecka, Franco Carloni Taiwan R.O.C. - Chen Chung-Hao, Chou Yu-Cheng, Kao Tsan-Hsing, Mei Dean-E, Yao Jui-Chung USA - Will Kerr, Olga Lah, Bettina Werner.